The Watchman (27 page)

Daylight that Alex never saw. He woke each afternoon at around three, exercised, cleaned the Glock and prepared himself all without leaving the cellar. Dawn Harding usually rang at about five thirty, shortly after she had seen Widdowes leave Thames House. Their conversations were brief beyond discussing the ups and downs of Widdowes' state of mind there was little to say.

When Widdowes returned he would cook supper for the pair of them, take Alex's food down to the cellar as if the SAS officer were a medieval prisoner and then at Alex's insistence eat his own in front of the TV upstairs, as he had always done.

On the fourth day the furniture van arrived and the loading-up began. Alex managed to sleep through most of the bumping and swearing that was taking place on the floors above, but was still awake by 2 p.m.

Tonight, he thought, squinting through the 5.32-inch barrel of the Glock at the smooth curl of its rifling. Tonight the bastard has to come.

And if he doesn't?

If he doesn't then I bow out. Apologise. Kiss Dawn's stillettos. Submit to whatever grim routine she and her department choose to inflict on me.

It was a full moon that night as Alex waited for his prey and the sky was cloudless. Even after midnight a little of the heat of the day seemed to hang about the river and above Alex's head a cloud of insects danced on the warm air. In front of his hooded, blackened and immobile face water-boatmen made tiny dashes over the surface film.

The lights had been switched off in the house for more than two hours when he saw the faintest of dark shapes drifting downstream towards him. It was about thirty yards away and a foot or two out from the bank. An otter? he wondered. No, too large and immobile. Too dead. A log, then? Maybe. Or maybe just a large clump of weed. River keepers had been cutting the weed on the fisheries upstream and great rafts of it had been drifting downstream earlier that night.

But weed was usually lower in the water than this. Quickly, Alex scanned the area to either side of it, allowing his peripheral vision to play on the shape. Nearer now, he saw that it was a large branch, splayed and leaved. But a branch which was holding hard to the bank and moving steadily towards him.

Behind his cage of roots and reeds, Alex narrowed his eyes. Was the branch going to barrel into him? Why was there a branch in the river at all in the middle of this breeze less night? Adrenalin began to trickle into his system. He pressed the Farlow's boots hard into the chalk and stealthily withdrew his arm from the grip of the underwater root. His hand held the Glock now and the safety catch was depressed for action.

Opposite the reeds, several yards upstream, the branch seemed to catch and halt. Alex's heart slammed against his ribs and his left hand joined his right on the butt of the Glock. Inch by inch he raised the weapon.

Nothing.

No movement of any kind.

Certainly no sign of anything human making for the bank.

Perhaps the branch was just a branch. Perhaps it had just happened to snag itself at the exact spot that he had been watching. Perhaps... Alex blinked. Before his dark-accustomed eyes the moonlit ripples jazzed and swung.

And then with blinding, heart-stopping force a shining black figure exploded out of the water just inches from Alex's face. Its teeth were bared in subhuman fury, a blade was whistling downwards in its fist.

Instinct wrenched Alex from the knife's path, but a moment later a rock-like fist slammed into the side of his jaw, white light burst before his eyes and he tasted blood. Alex went down, dropping the Glock, but somehow managed to draw the commando knife from its sheath on his calf. Twisting as his attacker's blade sliced through the water, desperate to regain the initiative, he hurled himself straight at the other man's throat.

The other's reaction was identical: defence by attack. The two met in a ferocious dogfight of stabbing and flailing limbs and Alex felt an icy sharpness rip down his thigh. He was losing this fight, a part of him realised dispassionately, and it was a novel experience. His opponent was at least his equal in speed, determination and sheer savagery.

If not his superior. Alex struggled to get his knife arm out of the water and into his opponent's face but the other seized his wrist and forced it down with vicious and almost inhuman strength. A knife flash in the moonlight, a desperate swerve and the neoprene hood was flapping loose at the side of Alex's head and his cheek was hot with blood. The two men's legs locked taut stalemate and then in the moment before they bore each other underwater Alex drew back his head and slammed it into his opponent's nose, felt the smashing crunch of breaking bone.

Desperately swinging at the broken nose with the heel of his free hand, Alex attempted to drive the shattered bone chips backwards into his opponent's brain, but managed only a glancing blow. For a fraction of a second the eyes of the two men met and they were each other's mirror image: hooded, bloodied and snarling like wolves.

Underwater now, throwing his whole weight into the attempt, Alex wrenched desperately at his own knife arm, but the other's grip on his wrist was as inexorable as a steel vice. Baring his teeth, Alex bit into the fist that enclosed him until he felt his teeth meet through the gristle, but still the grip did not weaken.

Instead, the blade flashed past his face again and although he wrenched his head away he felt the icy burn of its passage through his cheek. He should shout for the MI-5 men, he realised numbly, but then there was a second explosion of light as his opponent's knife hilt hammered into the base of his skull, his face was forced underwater and there was no longer any breath to shout with.

Soon his lungs were screaming and his legs flailing beneath him, kicking at the Glock as it swung on its lanyard. He grabbed for the other's knife hand, couldn't reach it, punched at where he thought the smashed nose ought to be and clawed blindly for the eyes. But the grip on his head was as immovable as that on his knife arm, he'd had no chance to grab any air and finally his mouth gagged open to admit a choking inrush of water. Anoxia came fast and he felt his hands sleepily release their grip on the commando knife.

And then, in some dim, drowning corner of his consciousness, Alex sensed that he was being dragged upwards. Retching, he vomited up the best part of a litre of river water and as he struggled for air he was aware of a hooded face poised above him.

"So," said the face quietly.

"You're the one." There was a hint of a Belfast accent.

Alex said nothing. His chest was agony and points of light danced in front of his eyes "Do it," he rasped contemptuously.

"Kill me and be on your way.

"I'll not kill you," the Watchman murmured, reversing his knife in his hand.

"That'd be too much like killing myself' The Watchman's arm became a blur, a third blinding whip crack of pain bloomed behind Alex's eyes and this time he lost consciousness altogether.

TWENTY.

Dawn Harding arrived at 5 a.m. with a Service doctor and the same forensic pathology team that had attended to the body of Craig Gidley. Above him, Alex heard them take the stairs up to George Widdowes' bedroom at a run, heard the abrupt halt of their footsteps as they discovered the horrendous carnage there.

Alex himself was lying naked on the camp bed wrapped in a single blood sodden sheet. The MI-5 security duo who had found him unconscious on the bank had removed his wet suit and dressed his wounds as best they could from their first-aid kits, but in the end he'd told them to leave it for the doctor. His left cheek had a deep transverse gash along the line of the bone and his right ear had been almost cut in half two hours after the event blood was still welling down both sides of his face. With the left arm he'd been exceptionally lucky the cut was deep but the knife had missed the subcutaneous muscles and his hand function seemed unimpaired. The wound to the left thigh was over a foot long and had bled copiously but again no important muscle function seemed impaired. Alex guessed that the tough double-layer neoprene of the wet suit had gone a long way towards preventing more serious damage.

He supposed that he ought to be a bit more worried about his skull. He'd always been a thick-headed bugger his dad and several of his instructors had told him that but he had received two very violent blows indeed and the pain when he tried to move his head was excruciating: of a different order even from his gashed face.

But the pain at the back of his head shrank into insignificance when he considered the scale of his failure to protect the life of

George Widdowes, who now lay upstairs in a three-foot-diameter pool of clotting blood with a gag in his mouth, a six-inch nail through his right temple and his severed ears on his pillow.

As soon as he could move Alex had insisted that the security men help him up there and the huge blood loss had told him immediately that Meehan had cut Widdowes' ears off before ending his victim's life with the hammer and the six inch nail.

What can those last moments have been like? Alex wondered speechlessly.

What had been the order of the fear that Widdowes had felt when faced with Meehan and his knife? And the pain as the ears were sawn through? What had that been like, coupled with the knowledge of the obscene killing that was to follow?

Impossible to imagine. And whatever the nature of these experiences, it had been he Alex Temple who had gifted them to George Widdowes.

Arrogance had overruled caution. He had placed himself in the front line without back-up and by doing so put another man's life at risk. In part, he realised with appalling clarity, his actions had been driven by sheer competitiveness, by the simple urge to prove Dawn and her organisation wrong.

He had dared and George Widdowes had lost.

His failure, personal and professional, was absolute.

He had never felt such despondency. Never felt such icily unquenchable rage.

Dawn made her way downstairs with the doctor, a T-shirted man in his forties with a faint South African accent whom she introduced as Max. Both looked stunned by the slaughter upstairs.

Without hesitation the doctor stripped the sheet from Alex and scanned his body.

Dawn glanced down at his bloodied nakedness and then turned to the wall.

"Shit!" she murmured.

"What afucking mess. I see he almost took your ear off too?"

"Didn't mean to," said Alex blankly.

"Just slashed at me, going for my eyes. I asked your colleagues to stick the bulldog clip on to hold the whole thing together."

"Probably saved the ear," said Max.

"I assume this was all done with a knife?"

"Yeah. Commando type."

"Had any tetanus shots recently?"

"Three months ago.

"AIDS test?"

Alex closed his eyes.

"He was trying to kill me, not fuck me.

"Get one done. Any other injuries?"

"Couple of good bashes to the base of the skull. Probably with the steel hilt of the knife."

Max felt gingerly beneath Alex's head.

"Does that hurt?"

"Doesn't feel great."

"Could be fractured. I'll book you an X-ray. Meanwhile, I'd better get you stitched up. You'll probably find that it hurts less and the time goes quicker if you talk."

Alex raised an eyebrow at Dawn.

Max caught the look.

"Yeah, you can talk in front of me. I've certified three murdered desk officers as having died of natural causes in the last month, I think I'm suitably compromised."

Dawn took a deep breath and, as Max selected a suturing needle from a case, moved back a pace or two.

"What happened?" she asked, looking coldly down at Alex.

"He got the jump on me. Basically, I was wrong to have continued with the setup here after you refused me a back-up man.

Dawn caught Max's eye and with a flick of her head indicated that he wait upstairs. Pulling his needle through, the doctor left it hanging.

"So George Widdowes' death was my fault, was it?" Dawn demanded as soon the door had closed above them.

"No," replied Alex levelly, 'it was my fault. It was an error of judgement on my part. I'm not ducking responsibility for that."

"So you had a Glock and he wasn't carrying a firearm of any kind?" asked Dawn.

"That's correct," Alex confirmed.

"Or if he was carrying a firearm he dropped it pretty early on in the game. So we both pulled knives."

"Go on," said Dawn.

"I broke his nose, bit his left knuckle pretty deeply and stabbed him a couple of times in the upper body. It obviously wasn't enough to put him down or stop him doing what he wanted to do, but I hurt him, I think. He won't be feeling good right now, and his face and hand will be visibly damaged."

"How long did this fight go on for?"

"Oh, three or four minutes probably."

"And how would you rate him, professionally speaking?" she asked.

Alex shrugged and immediately wished that he hadn't.

"Better than me, obviously," he answered wretchedly.

"It was weird, though. He was totally aggressive, but..."

"But?"

"But when the point came he chose not to kill me.

"Why, do you think?"

"Well, he said something just before he hit me on the head and knocked me out. Something along the lines of.. . oh, killing me would be like killing himself or something. Some psycho bullshit."

"You saw him clearly?"

"No. For a start he was covered with black cam-cream, for seconds he was wearing a wet suit with a hood."

Dawn remained expressionless.

"Can you remember anything at all about him?"

Alex looked away. Once again, he saw the icily staring figure at Don Hammond's funeral. Had he simply constructed that image in his mind from the MI-5 photographs?

"He's about my size and build. And right-handed. And he hasn't got a beard or moustache. That's all I'm certain of' "That doesn't exactly narrow it down a great deal."

"I know," said Alex.

"And I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the whole thing."

Dawn looked at him, shook her head and punched out a number on her mobile.